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Monday, January 16, 2017

You'll never believe what you will get if you click on this! (MAGFest Retrospective)

Greetings and salutations all,

It appears that it is the style of the times to write a retrospective on how MAGFest went for Phat Games / Burgal's Bounty. The format will follow a standard agile sprint cycle retrospective because I like to keep things concise and to the point :) But before that, I want to take a minute to say that this year was Phat Games (and my) first time at MAGFest. I was blown away. Never in my life have I had such a great experience at an expo! Everyone was kind and respectful, there to play games, and also there to provide great feedback. MAGFest was a very positive experience and I am looking forward to going back next year as an exhibitor or as an attendee! Without further delay, the retrospective:

What went well:
1. The vast majority of people who played the game seemed to really get into it. I have never had an expo where so many people would sit down and play through the first 10 levels plus the boss fight. It was a heart warming and validating experience. We have been to other expos before, but nothing like this in terms of positive response from the game.

2. Generally, many people who played it also enjoyed the story. This was the first expo where people went out of their way to consume it and they enjoyed it. It was awesome.

3. We received a lot of constructive criticism. I am actively working on implementing a lot of the feedback we received.

What did not go well:
1. There were a lot of bugs found I did not know about. Most of them are fixed now though :)

2. The tutorial. It gets the job done in terms of teaching people how to play, but many of the hardcore gamer crowd, that was there, found it annoying. It's a difficult thing to balance though, as many people also told me that they liked how the tutorial did not make them feel stupid :)

3. 24 hours. If I had more help I would have loved to stay open 24 hours. But as it was, I found myself exhausted after core hours.

What needs to be improved for next time:
1. The Phat Games booth. While it wasn't bad, it did not really live up to the vision I had. If I had a little bit more space, and more tape I could have probably made it work. I would like to see MAGFest for next year cordon off 10 feet x 10 feet spaces so each indie knows exactly the borders of their own space.

2. Press. I tried to find press who would be attending on Twitter but did not have any luck. I also was not able to meet any and no one introduced themselves :(

3. Next time I will see if I can find one more person to help out. I would like to keep the booth open longer next time I go.

That's all. I hope you enjoyed this quick retrospective on MAGFest. Burgal's Bounty will be coming out soon!